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If it's on the edge of forever, who is going to be reading books there?
Ever read The Bridge by Iain Banks? (I think I mean The Bridge, it might be another one of his (non-sci-fi) books). The bit with the old man and woman constantly playing board games in some giant castle/tower in the middle of icey nowhere. It's kinda like that. And some of the later WoW instances, especially in the expansion packs, are masterful pieces of gameplay/level design. I'd be proud to have made one of them. (I love that game so much I had to go through rehab ;) The puzzle element and graphic style are very reminiscent (especially those exterior shots with the eaves). Actually, I always wanted to make a level based on the bridge city from The Bridge. A section of an infinite bridge covered in art-noveau/retro future style houses/stores/buildings...
The latest expansion pack of wow has some jaw dropping amazing instances, the art and style is just perfect. Everything is large because of gameplay reasons (no one wants to fight bosses in cupboards, plus it be would exploited like crazy) but yet there are small alcoves and sections with details that bring everything together on consistancy. The instances are where wow shines the most for me, the huge game world is cool but the real wow factor is indoors.
Last weekend I had a small mapping break from my forever map and decided to try an experiment with rich coloured lighting, decals and sky portals. http://www.simonoc.com/images/design/maps_q3/focal1ac1l_1024.jpg http://www.simonoc.com/images/design/maps_q3/focal1ac1l_1024.jpg The above screenshots feature simple blue panels wrapped around geo architecture and accented with gold and blue lighting. Most of the time was spent with the animated item marker on the floor. I really wanted the decal to maintain edge shadows, have solid fill colours and yet be a decal at the same time! Something I always find lacking in my maps is the connection between world geometry and skybox, so the next experiment was connecting this together with various shaders, models and a portal skybox. http://www.simonoc.com/images/design/maps_q3/focal1ac3l_1024.jpg http://www.simonoc.com/images/design/maps_q3/focal1ac4l_1024.jpg The blue light beam flows upwards to the portal sky and the models in the portal sky then carry on the illusion up to multiple swirling cloud layers which gradually alpha away to blue sky horizon. The architecture around the focal point is just to accent the view upwards and make the players viewpoint vertical. Ooops I messed up one of the screenshot links, so here is the first two again, but correct links:
http://www.simonoc.com/images/design/maps_q3/focal1ac1l_1024.jpg http://www.simonoc.com/images/design/maps_q3/focal1ac2l_1024.jpg I really like this style: cartoon-ish but design advanced... it looks like a fan-art map :)
It reminds me a lot the Willem's White Room Q1SP... Good job :) what willem drinks in the morning! Wow now that must be some serious coffeeeeeeeee! :)
Yeah it just a doodle map, nothing serious or playable, just playing with q3map2 tech. Seriously, why so few people post screenshots of what they are mapping? :( ... either nobody is actually mapping, or current projects are not progressing as stucked in the limbs of Hell (my case) :P
Might post a screenie or two as it gets towards completion.
As for ever getting to play it - well if enough people work on maps for the rest of the project it might actually get released before the apocalypse in 2012 Seriously, why so few people post screenshots of what they are mapping? :(
i have gotten into the mindset lately of not wanted to 'spoil' any of my maps by posting screenshots. i don't know if that's dumb or not though. :P Going back to the mapping process post, personally I work in an iterative way, so if something is close enough to detailed that I could post a shot then it's probably pretty near finished...
(Not that I ever finish a map) Producing screenshots is easy...
http://img4.imageshack.us/img4/3084/wunzee.jpg but what is difficult... http://img42.imageshack.us/img42/2346/toozeep.jpg is producing the map... http://img42.imageshack.us/img42/8004/fweezee.jpg afterwards! http://img3.imageshack.us/img3/5016/forzee.jpg
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